BITS; Balancing Work and Life In Silicon Valley

By CLAIRE CAIN MILLER

Published: July 23, 2012

It was a good day for women in Silicon Valley -- and women in business everywhere -- when Marissa Mayer, 37, became chief executive of Yahoo and announced that she is seven months pregnant.

But the good news is a blip.

There remain distressingly few women among Silicon Valley engineers, start-up entrepreneurs, venture capitalists and computer science and engineering majors, for reasons including the technology industry's girl-repelling image problem, the tiny number of powerful women role models and the insular Silicon Valley deal-making boys' club.

Still, Ms. Mayer's two new roles mean that Silicon Valley, the heart of American innovation, could become the place where a more progressive attitude toward women and work takes root. After all, it is difficult to imagine other, more conservative industries, like finance or law, hiring a chief executive in her third trimester.

But by all accounts, Yahoo's board of directors did not even blink when Ms. Mayer told them she was pregnant. That is a hopeful sign that even though the Valley's engineering culture is not particularly welcoming to women, businesses here could be starting to solve the riddle of how to recruit more women into the top echelons of business.

Maybe that is why -- even though her pregnancy has no impact on her ability to do her new job, and a new baby would never warrant news stories about a male chief executive's hiring -- Ms. Mayer's pregnancy news has attracted so much attention.

Perhaps it is the Valley's broader ethos that makes this possible. Not only is it the innovation capital of the world, but many technology companies operate as bottom-up meritocracies and the ''work hard, play hard'' mentality values nonwork time (thus the requisite office Ping-Pong table). And certain tech companies have long had progressive benefits packages to keep employees happy, including onsite organic cafes, masseuses, dry cleaners, doctors and childcare and generous parental leave.

All this just might make Silicon Valley the ideal place for women to flourish in their careers. Even though women are underrepresented among engineers, the tech industry has had proportionally more high-profile women leading companies than other industries -- women like Sheryl Sandberg, Carol Bartz, Meg Whitman, Diane Greene and Carleton S. Fiorina. With some effort, it could become a model for other places, the same way that technology invented here spreads to the world.

Of course, Ms. Mayer is not an Everywoman. She is famously high-energy and driven and has an exceptional background as Google's 20th employee. She also has a big salary and hundreds of millions of dollars in assets to tap into for around-the-clock childcare and household help. The work-family juggling act is much more difficult for the thousands of parents who work at big tech companies without the same benefits that Ms. Mayer has. At start-ups, where many fewer employees work long hours to get a new product off the ground, it is even more difficult to strike a balance.

But if urgently needed changes that let workers have successful careers and successful families can happen anywhere, perhaps it is here, where Ms. Mayer's news was met with celebration. It is the same place, after all, that Ms. Sandberg's admission that she leaves work at 5:30 p.m. to eat dinner with her children was considered a successful business strategy. Ms. Mayer is a role model who will be closely watched, not just by those interested in whether she can turn around Yahoo, but by working parents.

And whether or not it's fair to talk about her pregnancy in the same breath as her new job, it's a chance to figure out how Yahoo and other Silicon Valley companies can make sure that women at every level have the same chance to prosper both professionally and personally. Silicon Valley, your track record on women isn't great. This is an opportunity.

This is a more complete version of the story than the one that appeared in print.